


limbo

by mido



Category: OFF (Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 12:43:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4961098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mido/pseuds/mido
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(noun). A state of neglect or oblivion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	limbo

**Author's Note:**

> i finished off like two hours ago

The Judge is nearly invisible among the white landscape, short and silky fur the same color as the sky, the houses, the ground. It isn't much of an issue; there isn't anyone here to pick it out of this wasteland. There isn't anyone else. 

The moss is wet beneath its paws.

 

After what feels like the first few days, the Judge comes to the conclusion that time doesn't pass here, in this monochrome limbo. There is no sun in the sky, no moon and stars, nothing hanging up above like it used to. This isn't much of an issue either-- any engagements the Judge had or would've had are no more, seeing as how its engagees are dead. 

It doesn't mind, no, but it does get lonely all by yourself.

 

It doesn't return to Zone 0. It knows Sugar is there, clawing at the door separating her and the world, screaming bloody murder for her warden and ripping her nails to jagged edges, reopening gashes scattered across her skin, now showing no evidence of its once pristine state. It doesn't want to see that again.

So it travels. Damien is rather dull, with not even any spectres there to occupy it. The mines are still there, albeit abandoned, yet it hesitates at the stairs, opting to stay in the open.

The monorail was wiped out along with all the Elsens, so it simply steps onto the tracks, pandering along the rickety wooden railway to Pentel. Nothingness envelops the ravine below, but the sky doesn't have much more. The Judge wonders where it should go after Zone 1; to Bismarck, where Valerie was possessed? To the sugar factory, littered with Elsen corpses and sweet scents? To The Room, where the Batter murdered his family? 

None of those places, it thinks rather skeptically. It can see the stocky block letters of the Pentel monorail station up ahead.

 

Perhaps, the Judge wonders, if Valerie were here, purgatory wouldn't be quite so boring.

After Pentel came Alma, with even fewer attractions than Damien. Dedan's corpse was still there, rotten flesh slipping off the bones as flies picked away at the remains. It looked away.

Arriving in Bismarck afterwards isn't an unwelcome experience; its paranoia has increased noticeably, its mind overcome with images of Japhet popping out and snapping Valerie's small body between its beak. The library still has its books, thankfully, and it is a welcome distraction.

 

It skips the sugar factory entirely. Dedan's body left the taste of bile in its throat.

 

The Room is the same as it was last time it was here, challenging a murderer with a blood-soaked bat, his fingers growing into razors and teeth to needles as his mouth had cracked at the corners, opening like a snake ready to strike its prey--

The switch is still there on the wall, waiting for an impulsive grab, a knowing push. It stands before the Judge as if tempting it, offering a way out of this infinite limbo, empty sans it alone. Its fang pricks into its lip.

"What do you suppose it does?"

Ah, sans it and the merchant, that is.

The silence between them lacks an answer on the Judge's behalf, turned statue still. Zacharie peers at it for a moment, then turns their attention back to the untouched lever, following suit with the Judge's unmoving mimicry. 

The cat turns and pads back down the hallway, away from the switch and the merchant and the past.

**Author's Note:**

> synonyms: up in the air, lost in the balance


End file.
